Once you’ve driven the road to Milford Sound, you’ll agree it’s hard to imagine a more incredible sight than the views you get along this drive. Although the drive between Te Anau and Milford is only meant to take an hour and a half, it’s almost worth setting aside a whole day for this as you will be stopping every five minutes to take in the scenery.

From the Mirror Lakes, the Chasm and Lake Marian rapids to kea playing outside the Homer Tunnel and waterfalls running down cliffs either side of the road as you drive, it’s hard to know quite where to look. Once you reach the Sound itself, you almost feel as if you couldn’t possibly take in any more beauty and then there it is, Mitre Peak and the other peaks spread out before you. With Fiordland experiencing the highest rainfall in the country, it’s rare to have a sunny day here, and I definitely experienced it in one of its moodier moments.

And if there’s one thing that detracts from the utter majesty of this spot, it’s the incessant sandflies that attack you from the minute you step out into the open. Be sure to cover up anything you don’t want to be eaten alive – despite it being a mild evening and morning when we were there, I literally covered up everything apart from my eyes and found myself swatting sand-flies away between every camera shot. No journey in Fiordland would be complete without a boat ride out into the Sounds, but it’s something I still have on my bucket list to do – I hope to remedy that very soon.

Fiordland & Milford Sound

Nature images of Fiordland and Milford Sound, New Zealand by Meghan Maloney Photography